Where is Your Boomer God Now?

posted by 1970s Abraham Lincoln
posted 10/26/2007 7:01:00 PM

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I loathe baby boomers, or as I often refer to them in my measured, Brokaw-influenced inflection, “The Self-Congratulatory Generation.” I could go on for hours about how these (mostly) accomplishment-free nancies have whined and attaboy’d themselves into permanent imaginary cultural relevance, but Paul Begala, (a boomer himself), has already said it much better.

There are exceptions, of course (as Begala noted), but they’re pretty hard to find. My own parents were war babies, not boomers, and as a teenager I found them unbearably un-cool. Why hadn’t they gone to see Hendrix (not a boomer), or Janis (not a boomer) or The Doors (not boomers, unless you count Krieger)? Why weren’t they at Woodstock (not organized by boomers)? Hell, the only decent vinyl my parents had was Simon (not a boomer) and Garfunkel (not a boomer either).

So somehow, I'd been sucked into the boomer-created Mythology of Sixties Awesome. Part of this was probably owed to being a teenage guitar player. I scoured flea markets and library book sales for records. I played Jefferson Airplane (not boomers), Quicksilver Messenger Service (not boomers), The Mothers of Invention (not boomers) and Blue Cheer (who knows), and chided my parents for being unfamiliar with archaic music from the era (“What do you mean you never saw “Giles, Giles, and Fripp?”). My mother was fairly patient. “Uh… your father was in Vietnam. We liked the Kingston Trio*. Simon and Garfunkel are nice. I think we have a Herb Alpert Record.”

Eventually, mom sort of developed an appreciation for the music that had probably seemed inaccessible in her post-college years. After watching a three-hour biopic on Hendrix, her assessment went from “filthy” to “He seems like a nice man.” She didn’t start listening to any of it on her own, of course, but it felt like a small victory at the time, back in the early 90s.

In retrospect, it’s pretty hilarious. Particularly now, as Dennis Hopper hocks retirement funds and Bob Fucking Dylan, the veritable icon of sixties counterculture, is selling Cadillac Escalades.

I shit you not:



My girlfriend and I saw Dylan play at the DCU center a couple of weeks ago, and it was an incredibly weird experience. It's sort of like watching the Magna Carta be rhythmically fucked by Hulk Hogan on one of those rotating disco stages with the floor that lights up like in the "Billie Jean" video. You know that deep down, some element of it was once historically significant, but the experience is fraught with such cognitive incongruence that all you can do is stare and say, "Well, how about that!".


I don't expect the boomers to feel betrayed by Dylan's latest commercial escapade, in part because most of them probably think it's just dandy. As a matter of fact, it's probably only a matter of moments before your phone rings, and it's your boomer parents calling you from their brand new Cadillac Escalade on the way to yoga class. "It's so roomy!" they'll say, "It's perfect for taking trips to Martha's Vinyard! You should get one too!"

I sometimes wonder what sort of steaming-pile-of-crap-masquerading-as-music my kids will latch on to and then ram down my throat. My hope is that they’ll dig up some really spectacular stuff from this era that I’m missing right now, and I’ll thank them for it as I hover-drive them to space high-school in our hover-car – although I’m probably giving myself more credit than I deserve.


* At least the Unicow likes them

Tags: baby boomers, bob fucking dylan, tirade
- Archive Link